


We're Living in the Future (None of this Has Happened Yet)

by adeepeningdig



Series: Little Animal Lives [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Ficlet, M/M, Marriage, POV Second Person, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 19:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18817063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adeepeningdig/pseuds/adeepeningdig
Summary: It is precisely 9 days before your wedding, and you are sitting on your front porch, Pilot’s head in your lap. You are thinking about the scurrying you’ve been hearing in the attic and whether you should tell Steve that you’ve got squirrels again, or whether you should just take care of them yourself, when Tony Stark pulls up in a chrome blue convertible that makes no noise at all.





	We're Living in the Future (None of this Has Happened Yet)

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little ficlet set after Little Animal Lives. It is advised that you read Little Animal Lives before reading this.

It is precisely 9 days before your wedding, and you are sitting on your front porch, Pilot’s head in your lap. You are thinking about the scurrying you’ve been hearing in the attic and whether you should tell Steve that you’ve got squirrels again, or whether you should just take care of them yourself, when Tony Stark pulls up in a chrome blue convertible that makes no noise at all. 

Steve is off in the city doing whatever it is he does with Wilson when he gets too anxious for the quiet of Canaan, city boy that he still is, and Willow’s spending some time shopping with her mother and siblings, who you’ve flown in for the wedding and then some. So you are alone and unarmed when Tony Stark opens the door to his car and unfolds himself from the front seat. 

Things being what they are, he will probably not try to kill you. He’s Steve’s best man, after all. But you get to your feet, just in case. So does Pilot.

“Mr. Stark,” you say, as he looks you up and down with surprising frankness.

“Technically, it’s Dr. Stark,” he says.

You nod.

“So you’re getting married, Sgt. Barnes,” he comes around the car, sun flashing off his bespoke suit and the rims of his sunglasses. He’s not wearing his gauntlets. “Or should I say Sgt. Rogers? Rogers-Barnes? Barnes-Rogers?”

“We’re both keeping our names,” you say. 

Tony grins.

 

So you’re getting married. You hadn’t wanted to, didn’t really see the point of it, but Steve wanted to. 

“Why?” you ask, and Steve rests his forehead on the back of your neck, pulling you back into the warmth of his body. “You smell like horseshit,” he mutters.

“Thank you for pointing that out. Very romantic. Why should we get married?”

“I want this to be official, Steve says, “I want it on paper and in the history books, so that when we die nobody can hide what are to each other. You know they would try to. The minute we both go, they’ll have us back to nothing but best-friends from childhood in an instant.”

“You casting aspersions on my friendship, Stevie?” 

Steve snorts into your hair. 

“I’ll think about it,” you tell him, and you do. 

 

So you’re getting married. 

Steve would have preferred going to down to the courthouse, just the two of you, but if you’re getting married, you want to do it right- in front of the eyes of a God you don’t believe in and whatever family and beloved people you’ve emerged from the hell that has been your life with. 

The Catholic Church won’t have you. This doesn’t bother Steve, and it certainly doesn’t bother you. It would have bothered your parents. They were good people, your parents, but their definitions of right and wrong were solely reliant on the Church’s definition of right and wrong. It is a muted sadness, knowing that your own happiness would cause your mother to purse her lips tightly and go silent, and your father to turn his back on you. There is so much wrong that you have done in your life, and yet, you are sure that your parents would have forgiven you the blood and the murder, but not loving Steve. Sarah Rogers, on the other hand would not have cared a wit. Steve came by his iconoclastic tendencies honestly- from his mother. She was devout, sure, her rosary beads were on her bedside table when she died, but she had her own sense of morality that was not tied to what any Church had to say. 

Your family is on your mind, things being what they are.

Over a year ago you discovered that your sister, Nell, is still alive, and at the age of 97 is living in an old age home in Phoenix, close to her late partner’s family. So you leave the animals in Willow, Lisa, and Howard’s care and fly down there with Steve to see your sister, your blood, for the first time since 1943. 

The heat in Phoenix is like a wall- completely dry and unyielding - nothing like the slithering humid heat of New York that you are used to. How your sister had managed to live here before the advent of air-conditioning, you do not know. Now though, the old-age home is cool and bright- fluorescent light on linoleum and a choking floral scent to cover the smells of bleach and urine and sick.

Steve takes your hand, which is trembling slightly. 

“Shoot me,” you whisper. “Shoot me before I ever get to a place like this.”

Steve just gives you a look- the one that others take for disapproval, but that you know means, “as if I would ever let you die anywhere other than in your own bed, next to me.”

“Great-Grandma Nell hasn’t had many visitors lately,” your step-great-grand-nephew says, leading you down the hall. “Except me, of course. Her memory is not so great, but I think she’ll be really happy to see you.” 

He opens the door to Nell’s room and you don’t even manage to catalog her face, you just get a glimpse of paper-thin skin and a bony wrist, before she sees you, her same blue eyes fall on you, and she starts to scream. 

You lose some time, then.

When you come to you are in the passenger seat of the rental. The car is pulled over on the side of the road and Steve is sobbing in the driver’s seat beside you. Peggy went in the same way, you think muzzily. 

“It’s ok, honey,” you slur, fingers feathering over Steve’s bicep. “Honey, it’s ok.”

Steve rubs at his face and shudders, eyes widening when he sees you. “I’m sorry, Bucky. I’m sorry. She was your sister, I don’t know what I’m going on about.”

“What happened?” You scoot yourself up in your seat so you can see Steve more clearly.

“Nothing happened. You didn’t do anything. Your sister started screaming, and you, you just went away,” his fingers are white on the steering wheel, “so I grabbed you and got us out of there as quickly as I could.”

“Ok, alright.”

“I just started driving. I don’t even know- I can’t drive anymore. It’s not safe for me to drive.”

You roll your shoulders. “I’ll drive,” you say, and that starts Steve crying again. 

“It’s not safe. It’s not safe for me to drive. I’m sorry.”

“Steve,” you say, brushing his hair out of his face, “I’ll drive. I can drive. And you don’t have to apologize, you loved her, too.” You’re not the only one who hadn’t seen Nell Barnes since 1943, or the only one who will never see her again. 

You end up in a Motel 8 somewhere just outside of Phoenix. And when Steve has finished his crying, you let him lay you down on the floor, because the bed probably won’t hold. You are rough, rougher than you normally are. The force of Steve’s thrusts jerk you across the cheap carpet, and your body rises to his, stroke for stroke, biting kiss to biting kiss. The marks he leaves on your skin will heal by morning, but your metal fingers digging into his buttocks will bruise him into next week. 

It is then that you decide that, yes, you will marry him. You will never lose each other to history again. 

So you’re getting married, and neither of you will have nary a one blood relative there to witness it- not even your step-great-grand-nephew, not even that woman from County Clare who had contacted Steve to tell him that she was a long lost cousin on his Ma’s side. “My Ma was from Wicklow County, thank you very much,” Steve had said. “You should probably spend a bit less time on Ancestry.Com, ma’am.” 

Any yet, your family, the family you found, and found you, will be there to witness it- Willow, Lisa and Howard, T’challa, Esihle, Sam, Nat- and Tony Stark, who is now standing before the house you re-built with your own two hands, expectant and seemingly without malice. 

He holds out his clenched hand to yours and drops two small objects into your palm. Rings- Vibranium, by the look of them. They must have cost him a pretty penny. 

“What’s this?” you say. Steve was in charge of the rings.

“A wedding gift,” he replies. “Steve already gave me his ring size. Thought I’d come and get yours.”

You look up at him and then back down at the circlets cradled in your hand. It’s not about the rings, or even the Vibranium. T’challa would have happily provided Vibranium rings had you asked.

Tony looks weary, and half-sad, but determined. Your hand closes around the rings. 

“Dr. Stark,” you say.

“Tony.”

“Tony,” you say, “I killed your parents.”

He raises his chin. “No you didn’t.”


End file.
